Mirrors (25 page)

“I’m confused!” I told him when he answered.

“About what?”

“Whether
Vibrio parahaemolyticus
is truly innocent.”

“You saw the guinea pigs! They bled to death after eating chow laced with
Aeromonas
but not with
Vibrio
.”

I told him about what I had learned from Chandrapur. “He insisted
Vibrio parahaemolyticus
was responsible for elevating XK59 levels in the victims.”

“How could that be?”

“I couldn’t get details because he was on his deathbed.”

“Perhaps he wasn’t thinking straight; what he said makes no sense.” Brubeck paused, then: “Are you in Annapolis?”

“Yes, outside Kosta’s.”

“Did you find his copy of
Theogony
?”

“Yes.”

“Were there any more codes you hadn’t seen earlier?”

“No.”

“Then, we work with what we have, but it’ll be in a very different direction from the route we’ve taken thus far. Do you recall the missive,
… not that rich chimaera.
?”

“From Faulkner’s
The Sound and the Fury
.”

“Yes, the operative word being
chimaera
. I suspect we’re dealing with a combined bacterium-virus here.”

“The bacterium being—”

“
Aeromonas hydrophila
.”

“And the virus?”

“One of the deadliest in the world.”

A lump formed in my throat.

“Marburg or Ebola,” he continued. “I’m not sure which.”

“Impossible! On Capitol Hill, Muñoz said all tests were negative for viruses that cause bleeding.”

“I’m not saying the victims were infected with
actual
Ebola or Marburg virus but, rather, they were infected with a bacterium engineered to contain genetic
elements
from one of the two viruses.”

“Wouldn’t your tests for hemorrhagic viruses have ruled that possibility out?”

“Not necessarily. We tested the victims for six of the seven genes that comprise Ebola and Marburg viruses.”

“What about the seventh?”

“That’s where things get tricky. As you know, for the past six months, we’ve had raging epidemics of viral hemorrhagic fever in Africa due to different viruses—Ebola, Lassa fever, and Crimean-Congo fever. That’s unprecedented, and it’s put a crimp on diagnostic supplies, including tests for one of the genes common to Ebola and Marburg.”

“Which gene?”

“One called
GP
. Got a pen? I want you to sketch the genes so we can discuss them.”

“Go ahead …”

“Start by labeling the schematic
Filovirus genome
. Ebola and Marburg are members of the same family called
Filoviridae
. Then sketch a bar and divide it into seven segments, the number of genes in Ebola and Marburg. The genes share names but differ in genetic sequences, of course.”

“Go on …”

“Now the gene names; begin at the left and move right.”

As he read the names, I completed the diagram …

“As you can see, three of the names—
VP35, VP40, and VP30
—appeared on stickies in Kosta’s copy of
Theogony
.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” I asked.

“Because, there was no reason to suspect Ebola or Marburg viruses as a cause of illness. But when the guinea pigs failed to become ill from
Vibrio parahaemolyticus
, I got to thinking about the word
chimaera
and wondered whether we might be dealing with a strain of
Aeromonas
engineered to contain genetic material from Ebola or Marburg that contributed to bleeding.”

“But neither Ebola nor Marburg has anything to do with XK59!”

“One step at a time, Jason!”

I pouted. “Are you thinking our strain of
Aeromonas
could have the
GP
gene in it that escaped detection because of a shortage of testing materials?”

“Precisely.”

“And that
GP
, once spliced into
Aeromonas
, somehow elevated levels of XK59 in the victims and guinea pigs?”

“It’s a hypothesis,” he replied. “And a little algebra will help test it.”

“
Algebra
?”

“Pull out Kosta’s copy of
Theogony
.”

I did.

Brubeck: “Tell me whether the entire text has line numbers.”

“It does.”

“How many lines of text are there in total?”

I flipped through the pages. “One thousand twenty-six.”

“Okay, so here’s what I want you to do: Get to the nearest scanner and send me the complete text. Once I get it, we’ll do the algebra.”

5:16 p.m.

I raced through Annapolis to a copy center where I scanned the text of
Theogony
before sending it to Brubeck. As I returned to my car, my phone rang. It was Frank Grainger.

“Good boy. I received the email you sent to the journal.”

“Let’s call it even,” I replied. “Amends made, so no more threats.”

“Not a chance! Your admission doesn’t erase the years of pain I suffered.”

“I gave you contrition.”

“It’s a good start. All you have left to do is answer my questions correctly.”

“Let’s keep our skirmish to ourselves. Others shouldn’t pay for my mistake.”

“
Mistake
? Did I hear you correctly?”

“I seek resolution.”

“Which comes from answering my questions. You’ve got time.”

I glanced at my watch. “Under seven hours!”

“Let me help you, then, by repeating the questions so they’re crystal-clear: First, which bacterium was the prime disease-causing agent? And second, why does XK59 cause muscle breakdown when introduced directly by the spider whereas bleeding when ingested or injected via needle? Again, failure to answer each correctly by midnight will result in consequences.”

“Be more specific.”

Silence, then: “XK59 in municipal water systems.”

“
Water
?” I repeated.

While I found the idea reviling that Grainger would seed water with a deadly protein, my studies of XK59 had indicated chlorine in concentrations present in treated water would likely denature the protein. But those were studies conducted in a laboratory under controlled conditions, not in the real world of mega water systems.

“I can hear your doubts,” Grainger said. “Chlorine and its byproducts in municipal water will inactivate XK59.” He chuckled. “But what if I’ve employed a system such as activated charcoal filters to remove chlorine first?”

I shuddered. “You mustn’t do that,” I warned him.

“We shall see what happens.”

6:19 p.m.

In the parking lot outside the copy center, I called Brubeck. “Did you get the scanned document?”

“Yes.”

I told him about Grainger’s threat.

“So let’s do the algebra, but let me first tie in Flagstaff! I want him to hear our strategy.”

After a brief pause, Brubeck returned: “Randy, Jason, everyone on?”

Affirmatives.

“Okay, check your texts,” Brubeck said. “I just sent you something.”

Two photos appeared …

“Electron micrographs of our two suspects,” Brubeck said. “I downloaded them from CDC’s website. As you can see, both are tubular viruses that can take on varying shapes. On average, they’re about one-seventh the width of a human red blood cell. Each consists of single-stranded RNA and proteins.” He paused. “Pull out the diagram of the Filovirus genome for a refresher look.”

“Surrounding the complex of genes and proteins in the central core of Ebola and Marburg is an envelope bearing spikes.”

“Like those on the armor of medieval warriors?” Flagstaff asked. His tone exhibited enthrallment with the concept.

“You can think of it that way,” Brubeck replied. “The spikes consist of a sugar-protein mix called ‘glycoprotein’ encoded by the gene,
GP
. Between the spike-laden envelope and the gene-protein complex is a matrix space where the proteins encoded by
VP40
and
VP24
reside. In a nutshell, that’s the anatomy of Filoviruses.”

“I’m with you,” Flagstaff volunteered.

“Good, so let’s move on. As I noted earlier, I suspected we might be dealing with Ebola or Marburg virus in some way because each has four genes that begin with the letters
VP
. When Krispix told me about the line numbers that accompanied the cryptic codes and missives, I wondered whether a mathematical relationship united them in a manner that would reveal which virus was at-play.”

He paused, I suspected, to give Flagstaff a respite, but hearing no questions, he continued: “Before we get to the algebra, I should tell you I consulted an online gene bank to see how many RNA nucleotides each virus has.”

“Nucleotides,” Flagstaff said, “the building blocks of DNA and RNA.”

“Right,” Brubeck replied, “and the various strains of each virus that exist in nature differ slightly in numbers of nucleotides, but to get the algebra started, we’ll use a single strain of Marburg and another of Ebola. The Marburg strain we’ll consider has 19,112 nucleotides in its genome whereas the Ebola strain has 18,959. My next step was to look up the nucleotide start and stop points for each gene in Marburg and Ebola. So, let’s do the algebra.”

I readied the calculator on my phone.